There are many things Aye couldn't do. He couldn't play a musical instrument (not even a Squambogian kazoo snail, which played itself).  He couldn't work a stove or swim or tie a knot. He couldn't drive a space ship. He couldn't even drive a golf ball.

He decided, completely subconsciously, that every time Captain Stig gave him a command, he would vomit. This kept the janitorial wet/dry vacuum robot very busy and had Stig overwhelmed with doubt.

"Flu season," Aye coughed.

"No it isn't. The flu only existed on Earth and was eradicated when the Great Mall went up," Stig replied.

"Yes! Their slogan was 'Shop Away Your Ills!'" Aye mused (poorly) to no response. "So...is there a mister Stig?" He said with flirty flourish, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his stolen uniform.

"No. There is another missus Stig," Stig said dryly, trying to hold in her increasing anger.

"Is it serious?" Aye smiled.

Stig only had two eyes to roll which she thought was a shame. For a brief moment she wished she had a dozen more eyes to roll. It would have been much more satisfying. On a very good hunch she typed the name "Jonas Perrish" into the console in front of her as the Shiv soared through the great vacuum of space, on its way to the prisoner moon of Tractos.

A holographic screen appeared before them both. A picture of a man who wasn't Aye came up with the name that appeared on the chest of the uniform that Aye was wearing. He shifted in his chair.

"So, what tipped you off? The vomit? The Mantis wounds? The horns? The smell of Barbohdean gin on my breath?" Aye asked sheepishly.

"Yes," answered Stig even more dryly.

"Well I for one am relieved," Aye sighed heavily. "Now that we don't work together there can be romance without side eye from the boss..."

"I am giving you one attempt and one attempt only to say something that will stop me from throwing you out the air lock. I'll help you get started. Who are you? Where is Perrish? And are you working for or with Flowermorey?" Stig asked, still trying to remain calm but losing what little patience she still possessed.

"I am the infamous, mischievous and very sexy scamp Aye-Aye of the lost planet of Towerscape. Perrish has perished. The Mantis Widow made him into a headless womb...and I don't work for any--" Aye's mouth dried up in an instant. He stared at Stig like Stig had just stuck a knife in his forehead mid-sentence.

He finally managed an arid wheeze. "Flowermorey? J-J-James Flowermorey??"

"Damn right James Flowermorey," Stig said proudly.

"THE James Flowermorey?"

"Yes, THE James Flowermorey."

"Is that who is in the holding cell? Ja-James Flowermorey?"

"Ja-James Flowermory is indeed in the holding cell."

"I rode in an elevator...just inches from James Flowermorey?"

"James Flowermorey is exactly the man you rode right next to in a very small elevator."

"James Flowermorey A.K.A. Weird Jimmy?"

"Weird Jimmy James Flowermorey."

"Ok. Let's get to that airlock," Aye said in a panic.

James "Weird Jimmy" Flowermorey was the stuff of nightmares. He was up there with all the horror movie iconic killers. He was legendary. He was truly infamous and known from one side of the known universe to the other. There were small slugs under dead fallen leaves under rotten logs in never-seen-before swamps on Squambog that shuddered at the name of James "Weird Jimmy" Flowermorey. Even the cold virus steered clear of the man.

As did death. Weird Jimmy was rumoured to be unkillable and even immortal. Aye may have looked the part of a demon, but Flowermorey was, quite possibly, the devil himself. Aye was quite right to request the airlock.

"Relax," smirked Stig, enjoying Aye's discomfort immensely. "Don't believe everything you've read."

"Read?"

"Heard. We caught him, didn't we? And within the hour he will be on Tractos forevermore and no one will ever have to fear ol' Weird Jimmy ever again. Though I don't envy the other prisoners."

"He'll escape." Aye said matter-of-fact. He took no comfort in Stig's words.

"Budgher Lempshop," Stig argued.

"What about him?" Aye sneered.

"Notorious killer. They said there wasn't a prison that could hold him...once on Tractos he was never seen again."

"Budgher Lempshop was no James Flowermorey. Budgher Lempshop wished he were James Flowermorey. Budgher Lempshop doesn't hold a disgusting funhouse mirror to James Flowermorey," Aye said under his breath but loud enough for Stig to hear.

At this point Stig turned back to her piloting. Now that she didn't have a useful co-pilot, she would need to navigate by herself. "Well the airlock is at the back of the ship. Right next to the holding cell," she said smiling widely. "Off you go."

Aye didn't speak for a very long time. He sat there and stared out the front window into space. He was terrified and this had sobered him up at a jarring speed. He found Stig's confidence somewhat comforting and was glad she hadn't decided to stick him in the Shiv's only holding cell for impersonating a co-pilot, but his head was drowning in a pool of doom water.

Finally Stig broke the silence. "So...Towerscape, huh? One of the Seventy Lost Planets, huh?"

"Yep," Aye muttered.

"I used to be able to name all seventy. Bantor, Tsk'tdink, Hallowlund, Towerscape, Flet, Grande JebJeb D'noll, Quarolode..."

"Good for you," Aye was now fear-grumpy and sounded like a sulky six-year-old.

"Fine. We are approaching Tractos. See? Nothing happened. I was debating whether I should just leave you there, too..."

Aye looked at her, broken. He started crying. "Please....I'm harmless. I'm just a...a...a pathetic...pathetic drunk...not a criminal...not...infamous at all," he quietly pleaded, being honest to both Stig and himself for the first time since he was a child. "Just pathetic."

"Oh, don't cry...I'll take you back, but you're still going to have to answer for this, you idiot."

"Thank you," he smiled weakly through tears and a very runny nose.

Captain Stig was just about to enter the moon's atmosphere when a loud siren went off. Aye fell out of his seat. A light on the wall started flashing bright puce.

~~~

Potto tried to sit up. He couldn't. He also couldn't see. There seemed to be sand in his eyes. There seemed to be sand in his nose. There seemed to be sand in his ears and his mouth and his everything.

He couldn't call for Lempshop from under all that sand so he made the executive decision to wriggle. He couldn't remember all the times he had been buried in the past, but he assumed that it had happened often by the level of skill he noticed he had in wriggling.

He wriggled left and right, back to front, with each wriggle putting more sand under him than over him until he broke through the surface with his face. He coughed up sand, and blinked out more sand. He then wriggled his way out of his little burial plot and stopped to catch his breath. The desert had given birth to its new fully-grown Quarol baby.

After a long spell of trying to decide whether or not he was a newborn, he stood. His legs were wobbly and, now that he could see, he noticed that his shirt was covered in blood with sand and sand midges stuck to it. When something confused Potto, which happened a lot, a little voice inside his struggling head always told him "Move along!" and he did.

So a wide smile stretched across his face as that same voice in his head said "Find Lempshop!" and he did.

He found Lempshop in the little shack behind him that he instantly recognized as home. There Lempshop sat on the floor, looking up like a cat caught eating the family budgie. His mouth and chin were covered in purple blood giving him a certain "pie eating contest winner" look. His legs were missing.

"What 'cha been up to?" asked Potto, his brain screaming at him to move along.

"Mmmm? What?" Lempshop answered absentmindedly, "Oh, the legs, yes. I seem to have eaten them."

"Not to sound judgey, but why did you do that?" Potto asked with a child-like wonder and not an ounce of judgeyness.

Lempshop stared off, seeming to both answer Potto and mutter to himself through a fog, "Nothing kills us. Nothing. Terrible curse. Terrible curse."

"So?" Potto said after much too long of a pause.

"So I came up with the perfect way to beat the system!" Lempshop blurted out, snapping out of his foggy malaise. "One would cease to exist if one were eaten, no?"

Potto shrugged honestly. Move along.

"How can one outlive digestion? The bots would have nothing to repair! Can't turn shit into a person methinks," Lempshop added.

"Fair enough!" Potto smiled not understanding in even the tiniest way.

"I didn't want to burden you with this task, dear Potto. I fear I've already put you through enough."

"Much appreciated!"

"So I thought I'd do it myself."

"Bravo! Encore! En garde!"

"So the legs went first."

"Such a trailblazer!"

"Go now, dear Potto. Go for a walk and let me rest. Auto-cannibaleeeese takes much energy, tiger cat."

"Yes. It. Does." Potto agreed. He turned on point, slipping briefly on purple blood, and pushed open the door to venture out into the monotony of the landscape beyond. He stopped before exiting with one last curiosity. "Oh...I forgot to ask...how were they?"

"My legs?" Lempshop asked searching for clarity.

"Yes!"

"Takes a little getting used to. It's a sweet meat."

"Hmm. Who'd have guessed?"

"Some people are dreamers...some are doers. M'boy, I am a doer." Lempshop announced with vibrato.

And on that Potto took his leave and wandered out into the desert for a walk. Within ten minutes he was buried in sand again.

~~~

It was now Stig's turn to panic. Weird Jimmy may have been a nightmare personified, but he had nothing on a bright puce light flashing while an alarm seemed to be screaming "AAAAAAH WAH WAH WAH EVERYBODY PANIC WAH WAH!!! THIS IS THE END WAH WAH WAH!!! THIS IS WORSE THAN EVERYTHIIIIIIIING ELSE BAD COMBIIIIIIIINED WAH WAAAAAAH!!!!"

Aye didn't get this. Seeing the cucumber cool Captain Stig lose her cucumber cool did however break him from his Flowermorey panic, if only briefly. He, unlike most that worked for The Node, had not been conditioned from the time he started his employment to be triggered by a bright puce flashing light.

"What's going on?? What does that bright puce flashing light mean?" he yelled over the siren.

"I don't know. Nobody but The Node knows. But it's not good!" She yelled back.

"Well at least it's not 'James Flowermorey has escaped' not good!"

Just then the alarm cut out just long enough for the Shiv's computer to announce, "System failure. Holding cell has been compromised. James Flowermorey has escaped."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! HOOOOOOLY FUUUUUUUCKBALLS WAH WAH WAAAAAAH!!!" wailed the alarm.

It was this that snapped Stig out of her shock for a moment. She dived across the room and hit a button (a very random button to Aye) that closed the hatch to their cockpit.

"Knutt? Lockdown mode for the entire Shiv."

"Lockdown mode is now in effect Captain Stig," said the calm voice of the computer.

"Life signs beyond the flight deck?"

"There is only one life sign beyond the flight deck. I read that the DNA of guards Ronson and Tool can be found in holding, in the corridor, in the engine room, in the lavatory and in the ship's kitchen."

"Damn," said Stig.

"Gross," shuddered Aye.

The Shiv's artificial gravity suddenly shut off. The lights started flashing. The Shiv started shaking and buckling. Stig and Aye were thrown around like two helium balloons in a hurricane.

"It seems James Flowermorey is now tearing apart the engine battery and it is affecting the electrical system. I may not be able to keep the flight deck in lockdown, Captain Stig," the computer said in a manner that seemed almost dryer than its previous dryness.

Aye screamed at a pitch that would make a dog pee on the carpet, and then did a face plant into the wall. He was stunned for a moment, only able to focus on a tooth that once belonged to his mouth but now was floating a foot in front of its old home. He flicked it away.

The captain had managed to get to the control panel and was furiously pressing buttons. "I think I know a way to--" she suddenly stopped trying desperately to save them and threw her hands up, clutching her face. It seems she had someone's tooth in her eye.

"It would seem that James Flowermorey is just outside the flight deck door and attempting to get it open. This will not be a concern in two minutes and fifteen seconds when the Shiv will crash into Tractos. We are now entering its atmosphere," stated the computer.

The door opened. The ship crashed. Weird Jimmy went sailing past both of them and head first into the thick, hard front window. Captain Stig went headfirst into the hard and jaggedy metallic-and-jaggedy-plastic console. Aye went headfirst into the comfy observation seating around the edges of the flight deck. The bits of guards Ronson and Tool became even smaller bits in their various locations around the ship. A small spider in the ship's walls was not affected at all, much to the dismay of a small fly also in the ship's walls.

When Aye opened his eyes the first thing he saw was the flashing bright puce light. The alarm had broken and all was silent. The second thing he saw was an unconscious Weird Jimmy with a messed-up face. He was a lot skinnier than Aye had imagined.

The final thing he saw was Captain Stig's brains where they weren't supposed to be, three feet from her skull and dripping off of the console.

"Knutt?" He managed.

"Yes?" Said the computer.

"Am I alive?"

"Yes."

"Dammit!"

"I detect two life signs. You and James Flowermorey. Captain Stig is now deceased. It would also seem that a Janitorial Imploder has targeted Tractos for demolition. The ship is mostly intact. The engine has been damaged and a new power supply must be found. You have sixty minutes to connect the engine to this new power source and pilot the ship away from Tractos if you wish to survive."

"Pilot? I don't know how to pilot a ship..." Aye sputtered.

"Then I correct myself. You have sixty minutes to connect the engine to a new power supply and find someone that can pilot the ship away from Tractos if you wish to survive."

"What am I supposed to use as a power supply?"

"This is a Shiv 360 Turbo Airship. It can be powered on very little, including living brain action potential."

"Oh, piss off."

"Seriously! The neurons' electric signals along axons to the synap--"

"Ok! Bully for the Shiv! I'm not likely to understand any of this! Just tell me what to do!"

"There are two living brains on board besides your own."

"Two??"

"Though the Captain is dead, her brain still has some spark in it, and the Life Core on this moon seems to be fixing it. Unfortunately, her body died before it was in range so it wasn't recognized. There's not enough spark yet to power the whole ship, but enough to power me. I am running on back-up energy that is almost gone. If you do not do this I will not be able to talk you through hooking James Flowermorey up to the ship's engine."

Not only did the Shiv have interesting power options, but it was a ship with a computer system that could be loaded into the smaller wet/dry vacuum robot so that it could actually leave the ship. So, the ship itself could actually join you if you wanted company for dinner, it could come into the office to do its own paperwork, and it could act as extra security if you were to get attacked while using it to check your email (all while slurping up that spilled milkshake you dropped earlier). Each one had a slightly different personality and name. This one was called Knutt, and Knutt was boring.

Soon Aye was sitting next to a large jar of a liquid he didn't recognize that housed a brain he wished was still in a sexy pilot, as he wired it to the main console of the ship.

"There. Just as you said. Is it working?" he asked.

"Yes. And now there is at least one good brain on the ship," answered Knutt in a new fandangled snide tone.

"Whaaaa?" Aye was taken aback. There seemed to be some Stig personality left in that brain. Knutt was boring no more.

Knutt then talked Aye into dragging Weird Jimmy down the corridor and into the engine room. Aye was terrified the entire time to the point of vomiting again. The new improved Knutt berated him accordingly.

He strapped Jimmy into a strange sort of metallic dentist chair. Huge clamps came down on the unconscious fiend's chest and legs, trapping him. Wires were inserted into his head and various places on his body, trapping his mind and nervous system as well.

"Now you only have seven minutes to find a pilot."

"Can't you pilot the damn thing? Or talk me through it?"

"This, as I have stated, is a Shiv 360 Airship, not an earth movie airplane. It is very sophisticated, and digits I don't have are needed. You are wasting time, idiot."

Aye jumped out the hatch, ran two steps and immediately tripped over something sticking out of the sand. It was the top of someone's head. He dug out a pale face that blinked the sand out of its eyes.

"You know how to pilot a ship???" Asked Aye.

"I dunno. Probably!" Smiled Potto.